Amherst Connects

Professors and trustees joined alumni at the Washington, D.C., launch of the Lives of Consequence campaign in January, where speakers included pro­fessors Caroline Goutte, a biologist who lectured on cell communication, and Gordon Levin, a historian who talked about the American-Israeli relationship. Among the other speakers was Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz ’64.... In February, six professors—among them, sociologist Carleen Basler and English Professor Barry O’Connell—gave presentations to those attending the Boston launch of Lives of Consequence. Basler’s topic: how Mexican-Americans who “pass” as “white” negotiate their identities. O’Connell’s: the state of public education.... Without leaving their homes, alumni heard professors lecture, via conference call, on such topics as the death penalty (Professor Austin Sarat) and health care reform (economists Walter Nicholson and Jessica Wolpaw Reyes ’94), thanks to the new, ongoing Telephone Lecture Series.... February brought to campus the second Gerald R. Fink ’62 Bioscience Symposium, at which students who aspire to careers in healthcare policy, medicine and bioscience research met alumni in those fields. Julia Segre ’87 of the National Human Genome Research Institute and MIT professors Fink and John Deutch ’60 were among the speakers.... Molly Greene ’01, Adam Stofsky ’98, Paris Wallace ’04 and Emily Silberstein ’06 came to campus in March to speak to students at the Alumni Social Entrepreneurship Dinner Panel about socially conscious business endeavors.